Excise case: Delhi HC grants time to Kejriwal to reply to CBI plea against discharge

THe new delhi heights margaret court on mon granted clip to former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and 22 others to file by April 5, their responses in Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) appeal against the trial court’s order discharging them in the excise policy case.A bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma fixed April 6 as the next date of hearing in CBI’s appeal against the trial court’s February 27 ruling.“The respondents in this case were served, however they chose not to appear on the said date. On the said date, an order was passed, giving them time to file the reply and they state that they need more time to file the reply. The respondents state that they have challenged the order of this court and filed a writ petition. Irrespective till this court gets an order from the apex court of staying the proceedings, the case is to be proceeded as per law. Interim order to continue. List it on April 6,” the court said in its order.The bench’s reply came after Kejriwal’s lawyer N Hariharan, Arun Ramachandran Pillai’s lawyer Pramod Dubey, and Sarath Reddy’s lawyer Vikas Pahwa urged the court to grant at least four weeks to submit their responses.Also Read:Delhi HC CJ denies Kejriwal request to shift CBI appeal in excise policy caseHariharan further informed that a writ petition as well as a special leave petition (SLP) had been filed before the Supreme Court. To be sure, while the writ petition sought transfer of the case to another judge, the SLP challenged the high court’s March 9 order.Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the CBI along with additional solicitor general SV Raju, opposed the request, arguing that the respondents should not be granted more than a week’s time to file their replies. He submitted that if they had already filed a petition in the Supreme Court and were seeking an adjournment on that basis, they should first remove the objections and get the matter listed there.“If this has been filed, they have a right to challenge whatever they want to challenge, but if this is a ground for adjournment, they must ensure that SLP is made ready, objections are removed and listed this week. It cannot be that you keep it pending and on that ground…. They can still not remove objections and keep it pending. This has become a pattern for some. This is a pattern where they make allegations run away. Such litigants cannot be encouraged. They have made a career out of allegations,” the SG argued.He further contended that this was not even a case where a reply was necessary, adding that there was an emergency in hearing its appeal, as the order under challenge was “exceptionable.”“It’s not a case where in my submission reply or rejoinder would be necessary because we would have to read the order impugned and the record which is already called for. The court may not grant more than one week. We have an emergency. It’s a very exceptionable order,” he added.On February 27, the trial court discharged Kejriwal, former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and 21 others, concluding that CBI’s material did not even disclose a prima facie case, let alone a grave suspicion. In his 601-page order, special judge Jitendra Singh of Rouse Avenue also directed a departmental inquiry against the “erring investigating officer” who framed charges against the accused in the absence of material evidence, holding that the IO abused his official position to conduct an unfair investigation.The agency had then approached the high court, assailing the trial court’s order on the ground that the verdict was passed by “ignoring” the evidence gathered by the agency, the findings were “inherently wrong”, and the agency collected several documents, examined witnesses, collected e-mails, WhatsApp chats and its evidence was not in the “air”.The high court on March 9 had issued notice in the agency’s appeal, observing that the trial court’s observations were “prima facie erroneous.”The court had also stayed till March 16 the trial court’s order directing departmental action against CBI’s investigating officer and observations against him, noting that the remarks were “prima facie foundationally misconceived, especially when made at the stage of charge itself”. The judge had also requested that the trial court defer the Enforcement Directorate’s money laundering case stemming from the CBI case and await the outcome of the CBI’s appeal against the February 27 verdict.On March 11, Kejriwal and others had written to Delhi high court’s chief justice DK Upadhyaya to transfer CBI’s appeal to a different bench from the current bench of justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, which was denied by way of a communication issued by the high court’s registrar general, Arun Bhardwaj, on March 13.The March 13 communication stated that the chief justice had observed that the CBI petition had already been assigned to justice Sharma’s bench in accordance with the current roster, adding that any decision on recusal would have to be taken by the concerned judge.